Rhubarb Jam

A new adventure for me......making my own rhubarb jam.  

Did it turn out???  Not exactly.  Oh don't get me wrong it taste amazing and I could eat it by the spoon full, but sadly it didn't set or thicken enough to be worthy of toast.  SOOOO....instead we popped open a jar tonight and dished up ourselves some vanilla ice cream and emptied one pint of rhubarb "jam" onto our ice cream.  Delish!!!  I'm thinking it won't take us long to gobble the remaining 7 pints I have. I'm thinking even pouring this scrumptious stuff on top of pancakes!!!  Guess I'll wait for my rhubarb to grow some more and give it ONE more try.  Perhaps someone who reads this blog can give me a tip or has a recipe they know is tried and true:)!!!

Garden 2015

 One of the things I truly enjoy is gardening.  This year I was so excited to have nick help me make my garden 3 times the size it was last year!!!  I crammed so much produce into it last year and I knew if I wanted to do more canning this fall that the garden had to increase in size.  In picture below the original garden is the left side of the garden where the black tiles are sticking up.  We use railroad ties to outline our garden and keep it as a raised garden.  So the lines dividing my garden into three sections are the railroad ties. The front right corner is the only thing that got planted after this picture was taken and that corner contains my watermelon and cantaloupe. This year we also made a new fence around the garden to keep wild animals at bay.  Those crazy deer, squirrel, rabbits, wild turkeys and such that roam our yard!!!

In my garden this year I have planted
4 big boy tomatoes
6 roma tomatoes
2 green pepper plants
2 mini sweet colored pepper plants
1 banana pepper plant
1 habenaro pepper plant
1 salsa garden pepper plant
1 orange pepper plant
1 eggplant
2 rows of  detroit beets
2 rows of bush green beans
1 row of green onions
3 plants of english cucumbers
2 rows of lettuce
2 rows of sugar snap peas
2 zuchinni plants
1 yellow squash plant
5 bush pickler plants
3 hills of cantaloupe
2 hills of watermelon
rhubarb plant
and in the back right corner I have 3 plots of herbs (cilantro, parsley and basil)
and on the left edge of the picture you see a dark soil spot...this is dill.

The white dot in the center of the garden is the water source.  Nick dug a trench and put pvc pipe underground from our house out to the garden so that there is no water hose strung across the yard.  This allows for a wonderful sprinkler to sit amidst the garden and water it with ease. (hence the turquoise sprinkler sitting in mid air).

I use cut grass as my soil cover to keep weeds at bay and soil moist.  It works awesome and then its great for compost come fall.  Looks like I'll be busy this fall when all that produce is ready.

Actually......I started a bit of canning today already.....